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Policing Pontius Pilate: Police Violence, Local Prosecutors, and Legitimacy

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Policing Pontius Pilate: Police Violence, Local Prosecutors, and Legitimacy \\jciprod01\productn\H\HLL\53-2\HLL206.txt unknown Seq: 1 12-MAY-16 15:08 NOTE POLICING PONTIUS PILATE: POLICE VIOLENCE, LOCAL PROSECUTORS, AND LEGITIMACY COLIN TAYLOR ROSS* TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION .......................................... 756 R II. THE CRISIS OF THE STATUS QUO .......................... 760 R A. Appearance of Grand Jury Manipulation .............. 761 R B. Crisis of Legitimacy ................................. 765 R III. EXISTING PROPOSALS AND PLANS ......................... 767 R A. Increased Federal Oversight ......................... 767 R 1. “Color of Law” Prosecutions ..................... 768 R 2. Consent Decrees ................................ 769 R B. Special Prosecutors .................................. 771 R C. California’s Public Hearings ......................... 775 R IV. POLICY PROPOSAL: LOCAL AUTHORITY; INDEPENDENT, PUBLIC OVERSIGHT ...................................... 775 R A. Local Authority First................................. 777 R B. Special Prosecutor .................................. 778 R C. The People’s Final Check ............................ 778 R V. CONCLUSION ............................................ 780 R As America faces a crisis in the public faith in the criminal justice system’s ability to hold police officers accountable under the law, the focus has turned to the role of prosecutors. Many reformers believe that they have found the current system’s weak point: the close relationship between local police and prosecu- tors. This relationship can lead to favoritism and lax enforcement—exemplified by the use of the opaque grand jury procedure. The proposed solutions therefore have focused on cutting out local prosecutors from police accountability efforts, and replacing them with special, independent—either federal, or at least politi- cally insulated—prosecutors. But an examination of the actual effects of the disempowerment of local prosecutors cautions strongly against such steps. The crisis of faith in the crimi- nal justice system is real, as is the inherent tension between cooperating with local police one day and prosecuting them the next. Completely removing that tension, however, would needlessly sacrifice the experience and ability of the local prosecutors who could most decisively enforce accountability, and cripple the political measures that local communities are beginning to use to force them to do so. Instead, a multi-tier system of checks could use independent layers of * B.A., Yale University, 2012; J.D. Candidate, Harvard Law School, Class of 2016. The author would like to thank Professor Alex Whiting, whose Government Lawyer class inspired this Note. \\jciprod01\productn\H\HLL\53-2\HLL206.txt unknown Seq: 2 12-MAY-16 15:08 756 Harvard Journal on Legislation [Vol. 53 review to augment, rather than replace, local prosecutors, while still maintain- ing local political control over the officials who hold officers of the law accountable. I. INTRODUCTION A small group of men gathers in a corner office at police headquarters downtown. They have met to discuss a case of alleged police brutality. “What are we facing from the riot?” a lieutenant asks. “Three witnesses’ statements,” responds the deputy commissioner, seated behind his desk. “All of them saying the officer’s assault on the youth was unprovoked.” “What does the state’s attorney say?” the lieutenant asks the commissioner. “He says it goes to a grand jury.” The internal investigations commander standing beside the commis- sioner has seen this all before. “That’s him doing Pontius Pilate,” he says. “The grand jury doesn’t indict, he looks clean for passing the buck.” “And if they do indict?” the lieutenant asks. “They won’t,” the commissioner concludes with a laugh. This was not a conversation among police officers in Ferguson, Mis- souri as they dealt with the aftermath of the shooting of Michael Brown, or in Cleveland, Ohio, as officials contemplated the response to the shooting of Tamir Rice.1 But given the criminal justice climate in the United States to- day, it could well have been. In fact, the dialogue is from an episode of the HBO show The Wire, which was acclaimed for its accurate portrayal of the behind-the-scenes reality of policing in America.2 The conversation among the command staff is more than a gripping piece of fiction. The episode, which aired in 2002, reflected what criminal justice insiders—including the show’s creators, a long-time police reporter and a veteran police officer— knew well at the time: grand juries can serve as cover for local prosecutors who fail to hold police accountable. That grievance now serves as one of the foundations of the growing critique of the American criminal justice system. Frustration and suspicion about prosecutorial decisions in police killings have swiftly moved from the notebooks of crime reporters to the streets of American cities to the ques- tions in presidential debates. Though much of the focus of the post-Ferguson protests were on broader issues of racial justice, an important strain of the 1 See, e.g., Larry Buchanan et al., What Happened in Ferguson?, N.Y. TIMES, http://www .nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/13/us/ferguson-missouri-town-under-siege-after-police- shooting.html?_r=0 [https://perma.cc/Y66J-KDUA] (last updated Aug. 10, 2015); Jaeah Lee, Anger is Boiling Over the Outcome of New Probes into the Police Shooting of a 12-year-old. Here Are 6 Takeaways, MOTHER JONES (Oct. 11, 2015, 7:17 PM), http://www.motherjones .com/politics/2015/10/new-tamir-rice-investigations-cleveland-police-shooting-6- takeaways%20 [https://perma.cc/JA3R-FUBA]. 2 The Wire: The Buys (HBO television broadcast June 16, 2002). \\jciprod01\productn\H\HLL\53-2\HLL206.txt unknown Seq: 3 12-MAY-16 15:08 2016] Policing Pontius Pilate 757 general resentment focused on the more specific issue of a lack of police accountability.3 Those critiquing the system have had ample fuel for their discontent. Since Ferguson, the number of controversial police killings has grown into a significant blot on the American justice system.4 Shortly after Ferguson, a Staten Island prosecutor and grand jury declined to indict a New York Police Department (“NYPD”) officer on any charge, after he put a black man in a chokehold and wrestled him to the ground.5 The man, Eric Garner, died in the hospital and the coroner ruled that the force used by police was the main cause.6 In November of that same year, a Cleveland, Ohio, police officer shot and killed Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old black boy armed with a pellet gun. Rice’s family accused the local prosecutor of using the grand jury as a screen in refusing to seek an indictment.7 Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty openly admitted that he was em- paneling a grand jury—as he does for all police killings—because he would prefer that the decision to indict be made by “citizens . rather than prosecutors.”8 While full national statistics are profoundly lacking, a number of imper- fect metrics indicate that a disproportionate number of people killed and injured by police are black.9 But the lack of prosecutions for police use of force cuts across demographics. In America’s largest city, New York, on- duty police officers have killed 179 people, 27% unarmed, in the last 15 years. Grand juries indicted officers in just three of the killings.10 In Hous- 3 See, e.g., Monica Davey & Julie Bosman, Protests Flare After Ferguson Police Officer is Not Indicted, N.Y. TIMES (Nov. 24, 2014), http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/25/us/ferguson- darren-wilson-shooting-michael-brown-grand-jury.html [https://perma.cc/KDA7-9KEY]. 4 See, e.g., Richard O. Oppel Jr. & Mitch Smith, Tamir Rice’s Family Clashes with Prose- cutor Over Police Killing, N.Y. TIMES (Dec. 23, 2015), http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/24/ us/tamir-rices-family-and-prosecutor-quarrel-over-release-of-evidence.html [https://perma.cc/ JWU5-HEGU]. 5 N.Y. DAILY NEWS, Eric Garner Video—Unedited Version, YOUTUBE (July 12, 2015), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpGxagKOkv8 [https://perma.cc/3MUJ-8LX9]. 6 Joseph Goldstein & Marc Santora, Staten Island Man Died from Chokehold During Ar- rest, Autopsy Finds, N.Y. TIMES (Aug. 1, 2014), http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/02/nyre- gion/staten-island-man-died-from-officers-chokehold-autopsy-finds.html [https://perma.cc/ JS3E-BQS6]. 7 Oppel & Smith, supra note 4. R 8 Id. 9 See Jaeah Lee, Here’s the Data That Shows Cops Kill Black People at a Higher Rate Than White People, MOTHER JONES (Sept. 10, 2014, 6:00 AM), http://www.motherjones.com/ politics/2014/08/police-shootings-ferguson-race-data [https://perma.cc/9N29-6Y75]; Jaeah Lee, Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?, MOTHER JONES (Aug. 15, 2014, 6:00 AM), http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/police-shootings-michael- brown-ferguson-black-men [https://perma.cc/EL46-3RJX]; Damian Ortellado, Emergency Room Reports Reveal Racial Disparity in Injuries Caused by Police, SUNLIGHT FOUND. (Sept. 4, 2014, 3:58 PM), http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2014/09/04/cdc-hospital-reports-reveal- racial-disparity-in-injuries-caused-by-police/ [https://perma.cc/593F-PFFA]. 10 Sarah Ryley et al., In 179 Fatalities Involving On-Duty NYPD Cops in 15 Years, Only 3 Cases Led to Indictments—and Just 1 Conviction, N.Y. DAILY NEWS (Dec. 8, 2014, 2:30 AM), http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/179-nypd-involved-deaths-3-indicted-ex- clusive-article-1.2037357 [https://perma.cc/C39V-LPJ9]. \\jciprod01\productn\H\HLL\53-2\HLL206.txt unknown Seq: 4 12-MAY-16 15:08 758 Harvard Journal on Legislation [Vol. 53 ton, police officers shot, fatally and non-fatally, 121 people, more than 25% unarmed, between 2008 and 2012. Houston sits in Harris County, where grand juries declined to indict in any of the cases. In fact, the last time a Houston police officer was indicted for a shooting was in 2004, giving Har- ris County grand juries a record of 288 consecutive no true bills—decisions not to indict—in such cases.11 Nationwide, only approximately 54 officers have been prosecuted for on-duty killings since 2005.12 Despite the lack of indictments in so many police killings, the failure to indict is not being directed by any central authority.
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